 Hello Zwifters, welcome to another episode of How to Run on Zwift. Today we're going to specifically be looking at a foot pod, one foot pod in particular, the stride. You may have heard of it, I hope you have heard of it, it is supposed to be the best most accurate foot pod to use on Zwift. Now there are actually two versions of the stride foot pod, one is called the stride and one is called the stride live. They both look pretty much like that, that is the stride foot pod, fairly flat and thin, fairly small and that fits with a little clip onto your shoe. Originally when it first came out the stride was a little pod that you can eclipsed to your shorts and then as they moved on with their development stride became this, the pioneer. The stride pioneer was a heart rate belt, a heart rate monitor and it fitted on your chest like this and it's just a it clips off like this look and that you can still pick that up but that's obsolete now and then it developed into a foot pod. So the thing about the stride foot pod is it was originally developed as a power meter for runners. So you know cyclists have power meters in their bikes that measures their level of effort in training and in races and historically with running we've measured our level of effort with our heart rate and with pace but now for the first time we had the stride foot pod or originally the stride chest strap which measured power in running. So it was another metric to add to your arse and love metrics. There's a lot of argument a lot of debate about whether it means anything whether the numbers are correct or not that's kind of neither here nor there when we're talking about running on Zwift and what's happened with running on Zwift is people have found that using the stride foot pod has been extremely accurate and so what stride did was they developed a version of their foot pod called the stride live. So the stride live did away with the metrics that you get for power in running and that made the foot pod a lot cheaper. So you can now go and buy a stride live with all the advantages of the accuracy of the foot pod but without the power metrics. So if you go to the Zwift website Zwift.com forward slash run you will be able to buy a stride live. Let's just go and show you that here. So that's the Zwift webpage. If you scroll down a bit and it says what you need to run I need a foot pod. So you click on that and it will take you to the stride website stride.com forward slash live and you can see here buy stride live $99 they do ship to the UK or they ship around the world. So you can get your stride live by going to the Zwift website or by going direct to the stride website not available as far as I'm aware on Amazon. Once you've purchased your stride live foot pod it is possible in the future should you decide you want those power metrics you can upgrade the firmware on the foot pod it'll cost you another hundred dollars but you can do it. The next thing to do is to attach your stride live to your shoe. Now I have experimented with this a lot and in my experience the best place to put your foot pod is right on the flat part of your shoe right at the end of your shoe. If you place it any higher on the laces I find that the accuracy is not quite as good as if it's flat as low down on the laces as possible so as near your toes as you can possibly get it that's where I've got mine that's where it seems to give me the best accuracy. So placement of the foot pod and this may be true for any foot pod in fact you need to experiment but I found that the lower I have it on my shoe the nearer to the toes then the better. Once you have the foot pod on your shoe it's time to get on to Zwift and pair it up. The stride and the stride live both broadcast in bluetooth and in ant plus so if you're using a pc a mac or if you're using ios so an iphone or an ipod or apple tv the stride the stride live will work on all of those devices for Zwift. So here we are on the pairing screen and you will notice I am actually in the ride pairing screen as opposed to the run pairing screen reason for that is if you do have a stride a full stride or if you have upgraded your stride live so it's got power metrics you might want to try this little trick so that when your run is uploaded to Strava or Garmin Connect you will be able to see power listed there so you go to the ride screen you pair your stride power meter as a power meter so there it is that's my stride and I pair it there and then I go back to the run screen and in the run screen here again I've got my Garmin on my foot if I shake my foot a bit come on wake up wake up there we are the stride appears click okay and there it is you also will want to have the stride listed as a cadence sensor as well so up there for run speed and down there for cadence and then you click okay and then you just wait as normal to go into your run so here we are on our main run screen something interesting to note the stride can be a little picky about when it wants to start running so let's just show you what happens I will start my treadmill so now my treadmill is moving I'm going to gradually increase the speed you'll notice my avatar is not moving at all he stood still watch as we increase the speed how long is it now 10 seconds 15 seconds maybe going a bit faster we're now up to six kilometers an hour and I'm now actually running so I'm now running we've been going about 20 seconds we've gone up to eight kilometers an hour now my avatar is standing there and now he starts running what was that 40 seconds 30 40 seconds so just do be aware of that little oddity about the stride when you start running if you're in an event and the countdown gets to zero and you're stood there on the treadmill as has happened to me plenty of times you will have a lot of catching up to do in your event if you're just running on your own for fun it's not going to be much of a problem but in an event you need to start running before the counter reaches zero and everyone else speeds off ahead of you so now that we've got to the stage where we're actually running how does the stride perform as a running foot pod as a speed source in Zwift well that's a very complicated question and it may take me a little while to answer it if you don't have a treadmill at home then you're likely running on Zwift at a gym and gyms have very expensive top quality treadmills with very powerful motors the stride and the stride live perform absolutely rock solidly on those treadmills when you set your treadmill to 10 kilometers an hour the stride will interpret you running at 10 kilometers an hour it will send that data to Zwift and your avatar will run at 10 kilometers an hour simple as that outdoors as well if you were to run outdoors um your stride will be rock solid in fact a lot of people say they can even turn off their GPS on their watch and use the stride for more accurate distance and pace measurement however when you come to using a treadmill that you might have at home one that's say less than uh two thousand u.s dollars less than a thousand uk pounds you will be buying a treadmill that has a motor which is not quite as strong as those at the gym and this is where it gets complicated the stride is very accurate however it is tricked by the inaccuracy of your treadmill what happens is because the motor is not very strong on a home grade treadmill a consumer treadmill when you put your foot down on the treadmill on the belt when it's running you will slow down the treadmill now what the treadmill does in order to compensate for that is when you're in the air when you've got both feet in the air running the treadmill belt speed speeds up a little bit to compensate for that so the treadmill is running at 10 kilometers an hour say and it feels to you like you are running at 10 kilometers an hour your heart rate will be the same as if you were running 10 kilometers an hour your leg speed will be the same you will feel like you are running at 10 kilometers an hour however the stride will measure that slow down of the belt when you put your foot on the belt but it will not measure the speed that the belt speeds up when you're in the air because you are in the air and essentially you're stationary while you're in the air when you're on a treadmill you aren't actually moving are you so when you're in the air the stride just measures you still so the stride is very accurate because it's actually measuring how fast you are technically going but it's inaccurate because you are feeling like you're running at 10 kilometers an hour does that make sense it kind of took me a long time to figure it out and I've had lots of tests with various other people I've had lots of conversations with other people if you troll the stride community Facebook page or the Zwift runners Facebook page you will see other people with similar issues and this is what we've come up with as the reason why the stride seems to measure a lot slower on home consumer treadmills than it does outside in the real world or on gym grade industrial treadmills so be aware of that if you are using a home grade treadmill the fix for it is is relatively simple it's not the end of the world all you will do is go to the pairing screen and calibrate your stride foot pod so this is how you do that so here we are on the running page and we click menu and we go to pair and you can see there's a little spanner icon here so we click that sometimes that happens we have to select the stride click okay click the spanner again and here we are choose a running speed what you will do is you will set your treadmill to 10 kilometers an hour you can choose any speed you want 12 kilometers an hour you can go right down to four and a half kilometers an hour so whatever speed you want set your treadmill to that speed click next and then click start and it will count down 60 seconds while you run on the treadmill at 10k an hour and it will calibrate your foot pod so that when you come back to Zwift you should be running at 10 kilometers an hour on your treadmill and in Zwift so just to recap you can get your stride live foot pod from the Zwift website or the stride website for 99 dollars if you do buy a stride live you can upgrade it to the full stride by paying an extra 100 dollars or so to get the power metrics when you start running on Zwift put your foot pod as low down as you can on your shoe nearest to your toes that will give you the greatest accuracy when you run on Zwift remember to start running early because if you're in an event the stride sometimes takes quite a while to actually start running within Zwift also when you're running on a home grade treadmill you might notice the speed is not quite the same as your treadmill so you might need to calibrate your foot pod if you're running at a gym then you will find your stride foot pod is incredibly accurate and that is it that's everything you need to know about the stride foot pod if you do have any further questions please go and ask in the Zwift runners facebook page or you can post a comment down below and I'll try and get back to you but really everything you need to run with a stride on Zwift is in this video thanks very much for watching do take care bye bye